


Agent Carter and the River of Truth

by onethingconstant



Series: Agent Carter Forever [4]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Espionage, F/M, Fun with Vita-Rays, Gen, Grief, Magic, Peggy Carter Lives, Peggy Carter does not have time for your shit, Peggy doesn't die, Peggy never dies, Resurrection, Surprisingly canon-compliant, The Ultimate Fix-It, Wakanda, cloning, peggy fixes everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-24 18:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7518025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onethingconstant/pseuds/onethingconstant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Good afternoon, Director Carter. How are you feeling?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Tolerably well, considering that I'm dead. May I ask what finally did me in? ... And what is today's date?"</i>
</p><p>Project Pendragon was SHIELD's failsafe. In the event of a crisis, Peggy Carter could be resurrected to provide strong moral leadership (and a firm hand with a stapler). But in 2010, what is SHIELD's is also Hydra's. </p><p>It goes about as well as you'd expect.</p><p>Soon there's a reborn Agent Carter roaming the world, righting wrongs. And with the events of the next few years, there will be quite a few wrongs to right. One wrong in particular ... </p><p>
  <i>"Would one of you blithering idiots care to tell me what's become of Steve?"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Someone to Watch Over Me

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys! I'll be trying to post weekly for a while, alternating between this and Left-Hand Man. This is that big Peggy fix-it fic I've been teasing ...
> 
> On a more personal note, however, I'm having a really hard time with the ol' PTSD lately, and I've got a big, scary meeting coming up at SDCC where I absolutely CANNOT break down crying or punch someone. So I would be embarrassingly grateful if you guys would make some noise in the comments, because positive comments are like 90% of my mood stabilization atm.
> 
> (P.S. The "major character death" is Peggy, before the beginning of Chapter 1. So basically the whole point of the fic is undoing that tag, but it still seemed relevant. No other major characters will die.)

The first thing she heard when she began to wake was the hum. It was a little like the drone of a refrigerator, or the distant rumble of industrial air conditioning. 

She was lying on her back, on a crackly institutional mattress, which trembled and … squeaked? No, that would be wheels. A gurney, then. She was in a medical facility, and being moved. 

She frowned, eyes still closed, and tried to recall what had happened. A fight? An accident? Vague fragments of images drifted through her foggy mind. Tanks and hoses and laboratory coats—a lab of some kind. Warm, rough fingers gripping hers. The scent of a familiar, spicy cologne. 

_I’m right here, Peg. I’m not going anywhere._

She needed that voice, missed those fingers. Even if the promise had clearly been broken. No one was holding her hand now. 

_Daniel._

That was his name, she realized, and with it came a flood of associated memories—gaudy aloha shirts, a shy and crooked smile, the click of his crutch as he mounted the stairs to her office— _sleeping with the boss, you’re gonna ruin my reputation—and what reputation is that, Mister Carter?_ —a mellow voice crooning a song at midnight—a worn band around her left ring finger—

She flexed the fingers of that hand, rubbed them together. Bare. Not even the dent where the ring had been. So the bastards had stolen not only her husband, but her wedding band as well. 

She tested her muscles with small, spasmodic twitches. She was weak, without much control. Drugged, perhaps. She’d have to play a long game, then. That was all right as long as she was the only one in danger. 

But how often was _that_ true?

 _Focus, Carter_ , she thought, and there was her name coming back. Margaret Carter, who answered only to Peggy. Founder of SHIELD, veteran of uncountable covert ops, connoisseur of whiskey and pistols and still trying, after thirty-five years of marriage, to teach her husband to make a proper English breakfast or an acceptable cup of tea.

_Focus, Carter. Do the job that’s in front of you. The first duty of a prisoner is escape._

The gurney rattled down what sounded like a long corridor, pausing occasionally for voices to murmur above her. Talking about her, most likely. Rude. Peggy counted four stops. She was quite the conversation piece, it seemed. 

At last, the gurney rolled into a smaller-sounding room, and rough hands lifted her into a soft hospital bed. She was manhandled into a thin hospital gown—fantastic; she’d just been discussed while in the altogether—and blankets were draped over her. She did her best to stay quiet, stay passive. Play dead. 

_Possum, Peg. It’s called playing possum._

_Have you ever seen an opossum, darling?_

_No, but he’s seen plenty’a rats!_

_Yeah, Buck, every time I look at your sorry mug—_

Those voices were different, with an older ache attached to them. The faces that came with them took longer to come back. One rugged and softly smiling, with sky-colored eyes and cornsilk hair falling out of place, the other full-mouthed and smirking, forever smoothing back a dark forelock. 

_Steve. Bucky._

The war filled itself in with those names, flooding her memories with adrenaline and heartbreak. Steve, Bucky, the Commandos—they were part of her, too, as much as Daniel and the SSR and SHIELD and Hampstead and London and Brooklyn and Washington, D.C.—

and wherever she belonged, it was not in a hospital bed. There would be no rest for Peggy Carter.

She opened her eyes. 

She was in a small hospital room, obviously private—institutional paint, but there was a little window looking out onto a garden and not a trace of those ridiculous privacy curtains. The blankets on the bed, too, were thicker and softer than any institutional weave. She was getting special treatment. _That_ , in her experience, was a prelude to being told to sit quietly, stay where it was safe, and possibly attend to her needlework or man the phones. Blow that for a game of soldiers.

Peggy was just sitting up when a young woman in a SHIELD jumpsuit walked in, carrying two folders. Peggy spotted the label on the front one. 

_Project Pendragon. Confidential file._

_Crikey O’Reilly._ She remembered that, all right. 

Oh, well. Time to make the best of a bad situation. She favored the young agent with her best professional smile and said, “Good afternoon, Agent—?”

“Thompson,” the woman supplied, and beamed. “Good afternoon, Director Carter.” She had dark blonde hair twisted up in a bun and pale blue eyes that flicked comfortably over the room, and Peggy was glad of the coincidence of her name. She’d long been comfortable lying to agents named Thompson. 

“How are you feeling?” Thompson the Younger inquired politely. 

“Tolerably well,” Peggy admitted, “considering that I’m dead. May I ask what finally did me in?”

Thompson flinched, just a little. “They told me you were very direct,” she said. “If you must know, it was cancer. But you’d lived a good, long life, if it’s any consolation.”

“And my husband? Daniel?”

“Heart attack. 1992. A few years before you.”

“I see.” So at least she’d not left him alone, then. “And what is today’s date?” 

“July 4, 2010.”

The calculation was automatic: _Steve would be ninety-two._ She’d done it every year, lit a quiet candle for him because she knew there was no one else left to do it. Daniel had always understood. He’d had his own rituals. 

“Do you need a moment,” Thompson the Younger asked hesitantly, “or—?”

Peggy shook her head. No amount of time would make this any better. “Briefing,” she commanded. “Now.”

Thompson the Younger visibly took a deep breath. “Okay, then. As you know, Project Pendragon,” she wiggled the folder, “is a failsafe operation, designed to guarantee strong moral leadership in the event of a crisis within SHIELD. Hence the name—”

“Yes, I know, and I didn’t name it,” Peggy snapped. _That_ had been Howard and his public-library education. Whenever he’d read the Arthur tales, she thought, he had probably been disappointed that the damsels had kept their clothes on. 

_But he liked the knights. Knights and shields …_

She pushed the thought away. Howard was dead or ancient now. His tastes were irrelevant. 

“Tell me about the crisis,” she ordered. “What’s happened?”

“The current director of SHIELD is compromised,” Thompson the Younger explained. “He’s begun collecting enhanced operatives for something he calls the Avengers Initiative. Indications are he plans to use them to destabilize the global order and set himself up as dictator.” She passed the second folder to Peggy. “We need to stop him, and we need someone untarnished and trustworthy to step into his shoes.”

“Is he aware of Pendragon?” Peggy inquired as she flipped the folder open.

Thompson the Younger snorted. “In theory, but he’s never taken it seriously. The cloning program only ever had the one success, and the process of transferring human consciousness to digital storage only worked twice. So he’s not exactly worried about a resurrected Peggy Carter coming out of nowhere to staple him in the face.” She grinned. 

Peggy rolled her eyes. “I see some SHIELD legends never die.”

“Are you kidding? They gave you a gold-plated stapler when you retired. It’s practically your trademark.” 

Peggy arched an eyebrow worthy of her mother.

“Uh.” Thompson the Younger went pink. “I mean. We have the highest respect for your service record. Ma’am.”

“I think,” Peggy said diplomatically, “you’d better let me have a look at that file.”

“Yes’m.” Thompson the Younger thrust it at her.

“And some _privacy_ ,” Peggy added, pronouncing the word in the most British fashion, making it very nearly rhyme with _livery_ or _literacy_. 

The younger woman fled. 

Peggy opened the file and studied the face of her new adversary. A fellow called Fury, Nicholas J. She knew several important facts already.

The first was that she was herself, but only for a given value of herself. She had the cloned body of Margaret Carter, circa age twenty-five to thirty, and the memories of that same woman, circa age sixty. Her last consciousness upload had been around 1980, from the feel of it, and so she was, effectively, thirty years into the future. She was also marooned, isolated, her friends and allies dead or decrepit, unable to help her in any way.

Which was a real bastard of a problem, because whoever had her was _not_ SHIELD. At least, not the SHIELD she had founded. That was the second fact. 

In the world of espionage, there were precious few constants. It was why she missed Steve, like a constant ache behind her ribs—why she had chosen Daniel, of all men, to share her life. When every loyalty was questionable, when a bosom companion could be a double agent, she needed a compass. A point of constancy, a tree planted by the river of truth. Steve, and then Daniel, had been her true north.

Peggy prided herself on her ability to judge a man’s value. Men presented one image to another and a different image to women, in her experience. If she could see both, she could find the truth inside the lie. She could find a man’s north star. With Jack Thompson, it had been his sense of honor; he would always act like the man he believed himself to be, whether brave soldier or crafty politician. With Roger Dooley, the north star had been pride, especially in his masculinity. With Daniel, surprisingly, it had been love—love of family, of country, and finally of her. It took a strong man, brave and wise, to make that kind of love his compass. Steve and Daniel would have understood each other well. 

Fury, Nicholas J. had a compass too. She of all people would know. She had recruited him less than two years ago. 

It wouldn’t be in the files; she knew SHIELD politics all too well, and making a new agent a favorite of Director Carter did him no favors. She had left no trace of their first encounter, of the burly young man with the ridiculous afro who had stalked up to her in a project stairwell and demanded to know her business. It had taken nearly ten minutes of verbal fencing with the bristling Vietnam veteran to find out what had set him off, how he’d mistaken her for a social worker who couldn’t be bothered to work with the poor and addicted and who had resorted to simply seizing children whenever the court allowed it. She’d finally had to pull out her government identification—not her SHIELD badge, not in a public building, but the one that identified her as a congressional aide—to prove she had no affiliation with social services. Even then, he’d followed her up to the apartment where she’d met Gabe Jones’ newest grandchild (a perfect little girl inexplicably named Peggy) and had a word with the mother about giving up recreational substances for a while.

Peggy remembered the grudging respect in Nick Fury’s eyes as she left. She remembered, too, the warm bundle of the younger Peggy as she nestled in the crook of her namesake’s arm. What had happened to that baby, she wondered. Did she reach adulthood? Could she be found?

Peggy shook her head. It wasn’t top priority now. All that mattered was that she’d sized Nick Fury up in ten minutes, if that. She’d known before she left the building, long before she called Dugan and put in a quiet word, that Fury was like a pit bull behind a chain-link fence. He would snarl and froth and rage at outsiders, but treat his people with shocking tenderness. His north star was territory; what was his, he would protect, and everything else could burn. 

By recruiting him into SHIELD, she’d made the entire planet his territory. He would no more harm the world than a family pet would maul the child it protected. 

Whoever had prepared this dossier didn’t know she knew Fury of old. They were trying to snow her, which meant there was a coup afoot. 

Bugger that.

Peggy stretched her arms, testing her newly acquired musculature. Compared to the much older body she’d been accustomed to, the new model was taut and sinewy. Of course, she’d had no opportunity to condition herself, so anything more strenuous than a stroll would be taxing at first. She might feel every nerve singing with youthful energy, but she wasn’t up to a fight. 

Then again, a spy who _needed_ to fight was scarcely a spy at all.

She went out the window ten minutes before Thompson the Younger would dare to return. By the time the alarms went off, she was out on the street in stolen nursing scrubs, tucking her hair under the hood of a pilfered sweatshirt. She hummed softly to herself as she sauntered away from her erstwhile prison.

_I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood  
I know that I’ll always be good  
To one who’ll watch over me …_

But there was no one to watch over her, she knew. Not for a long time; perhaps not ever again. What there _was_ was a large and presumably very different world in need of her services.

Time to go to work.

Peggy smiled to herself.

“Now where would I be,” she murmured, glancing around, “if I were a flying car?”


	2. A Kiss is Just a Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peggy gets lucky, navigates transportation systems, and goes on a quest to find the one person who can help her make sense of her situation. 
> 
> _"Good afternoon, Agent."_
> 
> _"Good afternoon, Agent."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place shortly before the events of _Iron Man 2_.

The world had gone starkers.

Peggy had always harbored a certain suspicion about that. The world had always seemed to her to be—badly designed, she supposed. Ill-thought-out. Honestly, whose idea had it been to write off half the population at birth as good for nothing more than breeding stock? And then breed with only the dullest of them? And that was putting aside the casual assumption that anyone with skin darker than a pine board was effectively a monkey in clothes.

Honestly, the world had fought an entire war against people who took those ideas to their logical conclusion, and humanity had somehow missed the point. Ridiculous. So she’d never had a very high opinion of humanity, en masse. 

But the twenty-first century was clearly a new low for the species. 

The first thing she’d done, after a good mile of walking and not a single flying car to be found, was find a tall, glittering building. The sort of place where, thirty-year gap or no, the wealthy and powerful would be sure to gather. She found a likely target four blocks off the street that had contained the fake hospital. The fact that it was quite a bit taller than its neighbors, with golden letters at the top inexplicably spelling out the word _HAMMER_ , helped quite a lot. Apparently tool-making was a lucrative business in the future. 

_The present_ , she reminded herself. _You are not a time-traveler. You are not H.G. Wells. The future is now the present, and there won’t be any going back._

It stabbed, like a knife between her ribs. She kept moving anyway. 

It was midday when she reached the Hammer building, and she found a convenient bus stop to loiter at while she watched the lunchtime crowds trickle out. Absently, she noted the women’s fashions, as if taking field notes in a foreign city. Hair—shorter, sleeker, shinier. Makeup—lots of brown and pink tones that made everyone look about twelve, and very little in the blues or greens she remembered, though three women passed her with gold eyelids. Lip colors were either severely restrained or violently otherwise—both useful looks, if she needed to either blend in or divert attention. Clothing was softer, shinier, less boxy around the hips and shoulders. Cleavage was nearly always displayed, even for women who looked well over fifty. Tight pants and high heels produced mincing walks, like wind-up toys, but there _were_ a lot of women in trousers, at least. Gratifying. And the crowd leaving the building contained too many women overall for them to all be secretaries. Unless there was a ladies’ magazine publisher in the Hammer building, that was a promising sign. A world with more working women was a world where Peggy could more easily melt into the crowd.

The men still wore suits. There were subtle changes—materials, tailoring, tie widths, lapels—but the only real difference seemed to be the total abandonment of male hats. 

Perhaps someone had invented a cure for baldness, she mused. Then she spotted a group of middle-aged executives coming down the steps, and discarded her theory. Every man in that group was balding but the one in the middle. 

The man in the middle stood out in other ways, too. There was his sleek white suit, a stark contrast to the drab grays around him. There was his obnoxious aviator sunglasses and his heavily gelled bronze hair (to say nothing of a tan that _had_ to be fake, unless the sun had changed color). But mostly it was his walk—half dance, half scurry. He swung his shoulders and hips as if moving to a silent disco beat, but his knees were permanently bent and his head stayed just a little too low. 

Peggy knew a poseur when she saw one. The man in the white suit was obviously rich, but not as charismatic as he wanted to be. He was trying to be Howard, or someone like him, and he wasn’t very good at it. Rich, vain, and insecure?

He was perfect.

She detached herself from the bus shelter and blended with the crowd just behind her target. The man in white boogied fast, but he couldn’t be going far. No rich man walked long distances—certainly not in a white suit.

The little parade went for half a block and then turned a corner to saunter down a quieter side street. Peggy scanned ahead, spotted the white-tablecloth bistro, and smiled.

The man in white scuttled in and was immediately shown to a table. Peggy let herself in through the kitchen door. Rich patrons hadn’t changed, and neither had the resemblance between nursing costumes and the uniform of the local health department.

The man in white ordered for his entire table. Peggy took shorthand notes on a pad she’d found in a scrub pocket.

The man in white drank heavily. Peggy asked entirely too many questions about the handling of dairy products.

The man in white got up and headed for the men’s room. Peggy made a beeline for the ladies’. 

The washrooms, thank God, were in a little hallway, out of sight of the dining area. It was simple enough to loiter outside the ladies’ until the man in white came slinking out of the gents’. 

No time to be subtle. Peggy stepped right up, grabbed the man by his silk paisley tie, and yanked him into a passionate kiss.

The man stiffened, tried to yelp something against her mouth, and then relaxed, parting his lips and closing his eyes as he teased her tongue with his. Peggy suppressed an irritated eyeroll. The man was a ridiculously sloppy kisser. She wished she had her knockout lipstick. Alas. 

When they parted, the man gave her a slow, lascivious smile. “Well, hey there, beautiful,” he drawled. “That’s some hello you got—”

Peggy punched him in the face.

The man dropped like a sack of rocks. She caught him before he hit the floor, eased him down, and was already rifling his pockets before he had settled into full unconsciousness. 

Pens, card case—ah, perfect. His wallet was like the rest of him: showy and a bit absurd. She’d never liked people who bothered with alligator skin, but needs must. In another pocket, she found a thin electronic device that appeared to be all screen and had only a single button; she pocketed it, on the grounds that any piece of technology was worth examining. Finally, she found a little plastic keyfob—more mysterious buttons—connected to something she recognized. 

Car keys. 

Peggy left the man in the white suit crumpled on the floor, walked out the rear exit, and headed for the Hammer building at a brisk pace. 

On the walk, she opened the wallet and found the sort of cash she expected from a rich but insecure man. The idiot carried hundreds—was he showing off or had inflation exploded? She supposed she’d find out. There was also a California driver’s license issued to a Justin Hammer, which explained the building, at least. 

The building had an underground garage, which contained a reserved parking space, which contained a low-slung sports car in a violent shade of yellow. Peggy sighed, noticed a distinct lack of external locks, and pressed a button on the keyfob.

The car promptly went berserk.

The horn blared, the lights flashed, and some kind of siren whooped. Swearing furiously under her breath, she jabbed buttons at random until the noise shut off and the locks clicked open. She scrambled in, started the engine, and peeled out.

In the future, even the _cars_ were apparently utterly mad.

At least driving hadn’t changed that much. The yellow car was a little temperamental, prone to making ungodly little noises when she was less than cautious with the clutch, but it wasn’t any worse than the Porsche she’d been stuck with for that ridiculous mission in Monaco. Honestly, for all that the Bond movies had done for her profession—largely convincing people that spies were flamboyant assholes and thus camouflaging _real_ spies handily—she still wanted a private word with Ian Fleming. If the wanker had only realized how many leering idiots would try to join SHIELD and end up in the hospital after pinching a female agent’s bum, he might have reconsidered naming anybody Pussy Galore. 

A clock ticked away in her head as she drove. She couldn’t keep the car for long. She remembered using tracking devices the size of a tack-head, with a signal range of ten miles; thirty years later, the technology had surely improved, and a man with a bright yellow sports car would surely have something of the kind installed. It was only a matter of time before she attracted the wrong kind of attention.

“Right, then,” she said softly to herself. “It’s just another mission, isn’t it?” She changed lanes with a twitch of the steering wheel. “Occupied territory. No backup. Just another day at the office.”

A horn blasted as she changed lanes again. She flipped off the car behind her—this was America, after all—and checked her mirror for signs of someone frantically trying to follow her bonkers driving. 

Nothing. No pursuit yet. 

She took three turns at random and pulled into the first service station she saw. It was deserted, possibly because its prices were about three times what any person would consider reasonable. Honestly, ninety cents had been a bit much; how did anyone manage $2.40?

“Excuse me,” she called to a man sitting in a little booth that appeared to be made of bulletproof glass, “but could you direct me to the railway station?”

*

Los Angeles Union Station, at least, hadn’t changed. The tilework, the coffered ceilings, the lack of parking—it was all achingly familiar. She left the car in a parking lot a mile away and walked the rest of the distance, through hot and dirty concrete mazes made of government buildings. She wondered idly whether any of them contained SHIELD offices.

It would be easy to walk in, announce herself. She was, after all, Peggy Carter; she had the DNA and the memories to prove it. Whatever faction had arranged her resurrection couldn’t have its tentacles in every part of SHIELD—it was trying to dislodge a sitting Director, and that was the action of an upstart. 

But no. She didn’t know how far the rot went, or how high. There was no one she could trust but herself. As per bloody usual. 

She trudged into the station and bought a ticket with Justin Hammer’s cash. Two hundred dollars, one way, to Seattle. 

_Crikey O’Reilly._

She boarded as soon as the train was ready, carrying only a hooded sweatshirt from the gift shop because it was always a good idea to be warm. She spent a few minutes in the terminal first, fiddling with the screen-device, but all the button did was light up to show a number pad and a picture of Justin Hammer making a face like a duck. 

Bloody useless thing. She dropped it into a fountain on her way to board. 

The journey was a long one, winding first through dusty slums (some things never changed), then through brown hills and a series of small towns, interspersed with stretches of Pacific coastline. Peggy parked herself in the observation car and stared out at the ocean for as long as it was visible. There was something comforting in the wrinkled blue of the water in the late-afternoon sunlight. It felt familiar.

“Hello, darling,” she whispered. “It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”

The ocean didn’t answer, of course. But after sixty-odd years of circulating in the current, Steve’s blood had to be well and truly dispersed. There was a bit of him everywhere the sea touched now. 

He’d always wanted to travel the world. It was the one gift she’d been able to give him.

Peggy wrapped herself in the softness of the sweatshirt—it had the Dodgers logo on it, which somehow made her feel a little less alone—and dozed as the train made its way north. 

She slipped off the train in San Francisco in the middle of the night. Let the hunters think she was making a run for the Canadian border. She had other plans. She caught a few hours of sleep in a cheap motel room that stank of old cigarettes, then got up and threw herself back into the mission.

The business of a spy was information, she reflected as she stepped out into the foggy chill of a Bay Area morning, and she had practically none. Oh, she’d figured out lots from watching her fellow passengers. The screen-devices were pocket computers that doubled as phones and occasionally played music or films; the president was called Matthew Ellis, and people hated him in the same casual way they’d retroactively despised Nixon; teenagers still wore ridiculous things to outrage their parents. Also, everything was absurdly expensive, nobody read books in public, and people pretended not to see two men kissing in the lounge car just as they ignored the adolescent boy and girl, one black and one Chinese, trying to swallow each other’s tongues. 

But all of that was data. The lesson had been drummed into her at Bletchley: _Data is not information; information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom._ She needed information at the very least; knowledge and wisdom she’d have to scrape up after. 

The city’s main library wasn’t where she remembered it; there was an art museum in its place now, and she had a moment of blind terror—had the new century got rid of _libraries_ , of all things?—before a kindly old woman at the information desk gave her directions to the new repository of human civilization. 

Peggy formed her plan of attack as she minced up to the circulation desk.

“Excuse me,” she began as she reached it. Her accent was as crisp as autumn frost. “I understand you help people find things out?”

The girl behind the desk—Japanese by her facial features, Californian by her bright smile—nodded encouragingly. “That’s right!” she chirped.

“I. Er. Oh, dear. May I sit down?” Peggy put a hand to her forehead. “I feel rather faint.”

“Ohmigosh!” The young woman hurried to fetch a chair before Peggy collapsed into it. 

“It’s just—” Peggy shook her head, thought of Daniel, and wiped away the tears that welled up right on cue. “It’s all so _big_ , so _complicated_ , I don’t even know where to _begin_ —”

“It’s going to be okay,” the young librarian assured her. “Take your time.” She patted the back of Peggy’s hand. 

Anyone working in a library, in Peggy’s experience, had for a north star either a dragonish desire to hoard books or a manic urge to help people. The second one was damned useful.

“You’re very kind,” Peggy sniffled. “I’m sorry, I’m overwrought, but I’ve just escaped from a—I suppose you’d call them a cult?”

The woman’s eyes widened. 

“They’re called the Brethren of the Shield,” Peggy went on, “and I was raised there, but they wanted me to—I’m sorry, I can’t say it—”

“It’s okay,” the librarian soothed. “Do you need me to call the police, or—?” 

“No!” Peggy blurted, then composed herself. “No, I’m afraid I can’t do that just yet. But I’m trying to find the one person who can really help me.” 

“Who is it?”

“My—grandmother,” Peggy said, quickly calculating her apparent and real ages. “I know her name, and I know she used to live in New York, and she worked for the government, but I—” She sobbed. “I don’t even know if she’s still _alive_ —” She buried her face in her hands and wailed. Angie, she thought wildly, would have been proud. 

Grinding her palms into her eyes produced all the puffy redness she could want, and when she looked up between her fingers, it was to see the librarian’s eyes gleaming with righteous fury.

“We can do this,” the woman whispered. “Okay. To start with—have you tried Googling her?”

Peggy blinked. “Google her? I hardly know her!”

*

It took hours, but the librarian was indefatigable. Peggy learned to Google, among many other skills. And she discovered all the records that were now available via terrifyingly efficient computers.

Cemetery records. Census data. Old telephone listings. Something called a Facebook. On and on. 

By day’s end, she had the address of a care facility in Virginia. 

There was more time in San Francisco. Time to steal a few more wallets and buy proper clothing, toiletries, a rucksack. Time to slip into the shadows and exchange illicit cash for identity documents good enough to board an airplane. Time to discover that people in the future were awfully paranoid about shoes on aircraft. 

A week after her rebirth, she stood outside a well-appointed private room in a building that smelled of latex, disinfectant, and discreetly approaching death. She raised a hand to the door, but never got the chance to knock. 

“Come in,” croaked a voice from inside. “You’re already late.”

Peggy took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and turned the knob. Three steps in, to face her future. 

“I came as soon as I could,” she said, by way of introduction.

“Yes,” the voice replied, as she closed the door, “but there’s a great deal to be done.”

Peggy snapped the lock into place and turned to face her hostess. 

“Just as well then,” she said, “that there are two of us. Good afternoon, Agent.” 

“Good afternoon, Agent. Let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Seriously, you guys, I was not planning to have Justin Hammer in this fic. But at least Peggy punched him. 
> 
> 2\. The yellow sports car was inspired by an article I once edited about a man who ran a super-luxury car rental business. The guy insisted that all cars in his fleet be painted black or silver, because, as he put it, "If you're already driving a Maserati, driving a _yellow_ Maserati is just poor taste. " So what the hell else would Justin Hammer drive? And then I realized Tony drives an ORANGE sports car in Civil War ... 
> 
> 3\. Fun fact! Keyless entry was BARELY a thing in 1980, and it took the form of number pads built into the door. Beeping keyfobs didn't come along until 1984 or so. 
> 
> 4\. Ian Fleming was an actual spy (albeit a really crappy one) and it is my headcanon that Peggy knew and loathed him. 
> 
> 5\. I've taken the train trip Peggy does between LA and San Francisco. It's called the Coast Starlight, and I totally recommend it as long as you don't have to sleep on the train. 
> 
> 6\. Librarians are the secret masters of the world, yo. They control information. Do not fuck with them. Peggy is a trained professional; do not attempt to manipulate your local librarian with a batshit story about escaping a cult. Don't try this at home!
> 
> 7\. Next time, we'll have Peggy and Peggy. You may want to find something to hide behind.
> 
> 8\. Come be my friend on Tumblr and Instagram! I am onethingconstant, and I'm on a mission to ruin the life of a particular fascist. (No, not Donald Trump, but there's a lot of overlap.) I also post lots of pictures of teddy bears dressed as Marvel characters (mostly Bucky and Peggy).


	3. A Good Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peggy meets Peggy and has a conversation about Mister Chad. Vita-radiation is explored. Margot is (re)born. A coffee pot is put to practical use. Peggy steals a car and makes a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I. Am. So. Sorry!
> 
> I didn't mean to leave you guys hanging so long, but life has sucked. By way of an apology, here's an unreasonably long chapter with lots of talking, some fighting, a musical interlude, and the most terrifying chauffeur known to man.

The woman in the bed looked like a paper doll. She seemed flattened somehow, drained of everything Peggy expected to find in a human woman. Her hair was as white as the pillowcase it fanned out across, her skin the color of old parchment and just as fragile-looking. She gazed at Peggy from under half-lowered eyelids, through the screen of silver lashes. 

She would have been unrecognizable had she not been giving Peggy her Nana's trademark look of default disapproval.

Peggy squinted. “Is that expression hereditary?” she demanded.

“Apparently so,” the woman in the bed said dryly. “Consider it something to look forward to.” 

Peggy made a face. “Must I?”

“Shockingly little in life _must_ be done.”

“Yes,” Peggy grumbled, “but it's usually the unpleasant parts.” 

The woman in the bed made a sound that would have been _humph_ if it had come from a larger chest. “Come here and let me look at you,” she commanded. 

Peggy obeyed, moving to stand beside the bed. Gnarled fingers crooked impatiently, and she bent over the old woman, wondering silently how poor her eyesight was going to get. 

The old woman gripped Peggy's jaw suddenly, holding her head still. Rheumy brown eyes peered in her peripheral vision.

“Erm,” Peggy said, using only her painfully pursed lips.

“Shut up,” the old woman replied. She lifted her free hand and ran her fingertips over Peggy's forehead, then stroked at her temples, probing a little past the hairline. Peggy glared, but didn't move. There might just be a rational explanation for all this, and she was still relatively certain she could kill the old woman if necessary. 

But only relatively. 

The old woman tapped Peggy's left temple once, huffed, and let her go. Peggy stood up, rubbing at her jaw in mock annoyance.

“A picture would last longer,” she said.

“Sit.” The old woman pointed at a chair. 

Peggy sat, crossing her legs to keep a knee between herself and a possibly mad old lady. 

“You're from what, 1980?” the old woman asked. “That would be the last reliable memory backup. We lost too many years to Betamax.”

Peggy arched an eyebrow.

“Yes, of course you wouldn't know any different,” the old woman muttered. “But indulge me. Do you have a decent working memory of, oh, 1925 to 1980? You remember Hampstead, the war, America? No large gaps?”

“How would I know?” Peggy retorted.

Another huff. “Very well. What was the name of Michael's pet spaniel?”

“Charlie.”

“Angie's favorite pie?”

“Strawberry rhubarb.” 

“The word Daniel says when—”

“ _Merda_.” 

The old woman smiled. “And what did we whisper to Joe McCarthy on that fine spring afternoon?”

Peggy sat back in her chair, folded her arms, and permitted herself the smallest of proud smiles. “That if he so much as breathed the name _James Montgomery Falsworth_ again, in any form, he'd see the contents of his sock drawer on the front page of the _New York Times_.”

The old woman's little smirk was a twin of Peggy's. “Excellent. I believe you'll do.” 

“Do what?” Peggy asked. “I haven't the faintest idea what's going on. All I know is that idiots are trying to kill me.” She considered. “Well, kill me or use me. So, really, kill me.”

“Yes, they're not much for reading in the house of Mister Chad, or they'd have bothered with our psych profile,” the old woman remarked. “The lack of scarring on your temples suggests they never got round to trying out the Faustus method on you. Did you somehow convince them you were planning to comply?”

“Went out the window first thing,” Peggy said. “Who's Mister Chad, and what's this about scars?”

The woman sighed and settled back into her pillows. “Have a sweetie,” she said, gesturing languidly at a bowl of hard candies on her bedside table, “and try not to choke.”

Peggy picked a humbug out of the bowl, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. 

“I call them Mister Chad,” the old woman explained, “because they seem to be bloody everywhere in SHIELD. At first, I thought it was ordinary leaks, the occasional mole, but it's more than that. Documents going missing, funds diverted, personnel on assignments no one gave them—it didn't fit any profile. The results benefited no known party. Sometimes the errors fell in favor of the Soviets; sometimes they worked against them. They worked for and against political parties, social classes, government departments—there was no discernable pattern.”

“Then how did you find it?” Peggy asked around her humbug. 

The old woman's face softened. “Daniel,” she said softly. “We were talking it out one night over dinner.” 

The memories welled up, unbidden, and Peggy closed her eyes to hold them back: dark eyes glinting at her in the candlelight, the music of his voice, the scent of his cologne—

“Yes,” the woman said creakily. “It's still fresh for you, of course. You've just lost him. I'm sorry—I remember how it hurt.” 

Peggy swiped furiously at her eyes. “It's all right,” she muttered. “Go on.”

“He was telling war stories,” the old woman said gently. “His unit was having trouble getting supplies in the fall of '44. Some of the trucks were falling prey to German patrols, but they were losing supply lines in territory they thought was safe as well. It was weeks before they realized—”

“They had two enemies,” Peggy finished for her. “Hydra had broken with Hitler, and they needed their own sources of materiel.” She opened watery eyes. “It's the sort of detail he'd notice.” 

The old woman smiled kindly at her. “Precisely. Once I realized there was an unknown agenda at work, I was able to track their activities a little better. I never got a name or a manifesto, but I know they're highly coordinated and endemic—a parasite, if you like.” 

“Wot, no quinine?” Peggy muttered. 

The old woman snorted with laughter. “I've been waiting twenty years for someone to get the joke!”

Peggy smiled through her tears. She'd seen the Mister Chad graffiti during the war, the big-nosed fellow poking over the fence to complain: _Wot? No beer? Wot? No stockings? Wot? No petrol?_ Even the Americans had started chalking him up in various places. She'd had quite the argument with Barnes about it. 

_Kilroy, Carter. His name's Kilroy._

_It certainly is not! That's Mister Chad if ever I laid eyes on him!_

_Nah, see, it says “Kilroy was here” underneath._

_Anybody could have added that. It's a British reference. The SAS got here first._

_Nah, I saw the guy chalking it up. He was USA all the way._

_What makes you so sure?_

_Well, it was this big dumb punk from Brooklyn wearin' a flag, so I—ow!_

_Serves you right._

Peggy sighed. “All right. SHIELD has a parasite. What does Mister Chad want with me?”

“An Agent Carter they can control,” the old woman replied. 

Peggy snorted. 

“Don't laugh. They're frighteningly persuasive. You saw some of their early work, when they were relying on drugs rather than transcranial electroshock.” 

Peggy frowned. Then the penny dropped, and she shuddered. “Barnes. Poor man.”

“Just so. And as for why they bothered with such a recalcitrant subject—” the woman in the bed smiled sadly “—they had no choice. No other director could be viably cloned. I don't believe they ever figured out why.”

“But you did?”

“It was Howard, in fact. He worked on the project at the start, and never entirely let it go. Took him years to wheedle a cheek swab out of me to confirm it. Our cells are abnormal.”

Peggy sucked on the humbug, feeling like she was taking an exam she'd not studied for.

“It's probably how poor Bucky survived his fall,” the old woman went on, “and how we were both able to sense what remained of Steve. The three of us are a club of sorts. After Steve, you and I technically hold the world record for highest and most prolonged exposure to vita-radiation.”

Peggy took a sharp breath.

_Carter! Get your ass over here!_

_Buck, manners!_

_Screw manners, it's too cold. Carter!_

_Did you need something, Sergeant Barnes?_

_Yeah. You, me, an' the human radiator under the same blanket._

_Buck …_

_No, Captain, no need. The Sergeant makes a compelling argument. I'm honored by the invitation._

_Peggy, what if people say—_

_Shaddup, Steve, there's icicles on Dum-Dum's mustache._

Peggy choked on the humbug. 

Vita-radiation. Of course. They had known so little about any kind of radiation, then—she'd read stories as a girl of women who painted watch faces with luminous paint and died of radium poisoning. It had been hard to believe in invisible hazards, poisons that couldn't be tasted or felt. And as careful as Erskine had been, he had entrusted his design for the rebirth chamber to Howard, who had … tinkered. 

And Peggy had been there. First in the lab, securing the facility and prodding Howard to keep things on track as he tested the chamber. Then in the Brooklyn facility when the blinding light and the frail man's screams had birthed the world's first super-soldier. And then—with Steve. Ever and always with Steve.

Vita-rays didn't hang around long; a good scrubbing would get rid of any residue. But Steve hadn't simply bathed in vita-rays. He'd been flooded with them, his blood and bone infused with them. Vita-radiation had settled in his marrow, and Howard had joked that Steve's bones probably glowed in the dark like a radium girl's. 

And Peggy had spent more time close to him than anyone else, except perhaps for Bucky Barnes. Sitting beside him through endless briefings. Tramping through the woods a half-step ahead of him. Lying beside him in a field at night to teach him his constellations. Perching on his lap to distract him when Barnes was up to no good. Spending cold nights wrapped up in his arms.

Steve had left his traces on her in a thousand ways. What was one more now?

“Breathe!” the old woman snapped, and Peggy gagged and coughed up the humbug. It tasted of bile and mint as she spat it into a wastebasket. 

“Terribly sorry,” she croaked, wiping her mouth. 

The old woman flapped a hand dismissively. “No need. When I realized it, I choked on whiskey.”

Peggy gave a weak smile. “Sounds about right.”

“In any case,” the old woman went on, “their bad luck is our good. I propose,” one eye glittered, “an alliance.” 

“Oh? What for?” 

The woman's face darkened. “Chad is, as agreed, a parasite. I want it eradicated.” 

“Oh? And what's in it for me?”

“What's—!” The old woman sputtered. “The same that's in it for me! Am I being sassed by my own clone?”

“Genetically, we're twins,” Peggy said reasonably. “I simply happen to be the younger one. And as I presume I'll be doing all the legwork,” she glanced significantly at the blankets covering her counterpart's legs, “I'm going to need something a good deal more compelling than _because I said so_. Why shouldn't I stroll out of here and start a new life?”

The woman glowered.

Peggy glared.

After a moment, the old woman asked, “Were we always this infuriating?”

“That depends on whether we take Colonel Phillips' word for it.” 

The woman huffed a laugh and held out a hand. “Indulge me a moment.” 

Warily, Peggy took it.

“It takes a little while,” the old woman explained. “Or it should. Something to do with sympathetic nervous systems, according to Howard. But then I've scarcely had an opportunity to test it, have I?”

“I don't know—have you?” Peggy said crossly, and then the world exploded.

Sensations blasted through her brain, so many colors and lights and smells and sounds and shapes that she was certain she was somehow _tasting_ cerise. After a heartbeat of total madness, it settled into a mere fire hose of disconnected memories:

_Little Peggy Jones, now tall and stately with her hair in a thick cascade of braids, striding across a stage to take a diploma and flash a brilliant smile at her godmother in the audience—_

_Angie, gray at the edges, laughing and weeping into Peggy's shoulder as she clutches a pewter medallion stamped with the masks of comedy and tragedy—_

_Anthony Stark, gazing dully at her across a gaping hole in the ground as his parents' caskets are lowered into it to the droning of a strange minister—_

_Ana and Edwin Jarvis, shuffling together in a sunlit garden as a pair of Bernese mountain dogs amble circles around them—_

_The deepening lines around Daniel's mouth as he smiles at her over the breakfast table, day after day, year after year—_

_A blonde-haired girl with Daniel's brown eyes, blinking up from Peggy's lap as someone explains_ There was an accident _and_ her name is Sharon _—_

 _A ruggedly handsome man with strawberry-gold hair, extending a hand and saying_ Alexander Pierce, it's an honor _, and the twist in her gut that tells her something's wrong—_

 _The words_ Most Excellent Order of the British Empire _in gilt on parchment, causing her to blink in utter shock—_

_The weight of Daniel's hands on her shoulder and hip as they sway, dancing in solitude to music of their own—_

_The stench of smoke from Tony's latest experiment—_

_The murmur of a queen's voice in her ear, confiding secrets—_

_The glint of mischief in Angie's eye—_

_The click of Sharon's safety being thumbed off—_

_The salty tang of Daniel's signature_ canja _—_

_The perfume of fresh flowers laid on fresher graves—_

_The glimmer of silver in dark hair—_

_The weight of a string of pearls—_

_The warmth of a trembling, wrinkled hand—_

_The stink of hospital antiseptic—_

_The echo of two words she cannot hear—_

_Pain—_

_Joy—_

_Grief—_

_Triumph—_

_Loss—_

And then it all slammed into place in her head, and Peggy collapsed into her chair, gasping out noises that most definitely weren't sobs. And then they _were_ sobs, dammit, and tears were flooding down her face, and she was sobbing and wheezing like she'd not done since she'd gotten back to base after Steve went down—

No, like she'd not done since she'd heard about Daniel. She knew that now. She'd wept like this for him, too.

“Crikey O'Reilly,” croaked the woman in the bed. 

Peggy looked up, into brown eyes, and for the first time recognized herself in the ancient face.

All the new memories helped. 

“My God,” she gasped. “Howard—”

“Thought it might work like that,” her older self agreed. Her thin chest was heaving. “The vita-radiation—”

“Supercharged our nervous system and keeps trying to regenerate, so when we touched, with our psychic sensitivity to other vita-ray recipients already so high—” Peggy put in.

“We exchanged memories,” the elder Carter finished. “So now you see.”

“Yes.” Peggy closed her eyes to stop the tears. She didn't merely _know_ Mister Chad now; she _understood_. Years of chasing slim leads, sifting for the tiniest of clues, beating her head against the wall of a sinister enigma, until— “And we _had_ to quit! Of all the bloody stupid—”

“They call it Alzheimer's disease now,” the senior Peggy supplied. “Bloody awful. I'm glad to have a properly functional brain to store all this in.”

“You're dying,” Peggy whispered. “I could feel it—”

“ _We're_ dying,” her counterpart corrected. “But only half of us. And the other half can still finish the job.” 

Peggy shook her head. “We've been out of the game so long, I'm not sure we can.” 

“There are ways.”

Peggy lifted her head as comprehension dawned. “Oh,” she said. The extra memories _were_ helpful. “Can she be trusted?”

“Nicholas trusts her.”

“I suppose that's all we've got for now.”

“For now.” The old woman settled back into her pillows. “I will expect regular reports. Can't keep half of us in the dark.”

“Naturally.” Peggy stood and turned to go.

“Margot.”

She paused and turned back, surprised, searching her new recollections. “We—we never told anyone, did we? About that?” She shook her head. “No. We told Daniel.”

The old woman nodded. “And he understood.”

Yes, Peggy thought. Daniel had understood all of it. About her months undercover in France, answering to the French version of her name, the one she'd always thought of as dreadfully exotic. About what she'd done in those months, when she'd not been herself, when she'd first carried lives in her hands.

Daniel had understood. He always had.

“We never much liked Margot,” Peggy said. “But we never gave her a chance, either. And Daniel loved her too, when he knew.”

“We could always trust his judgment.”

Peggy nodded once, and left.

The corridor was bustling with care-home staff, pushing carts and wheeling chairs and generally being a little busier than they had been when Peggy had entered her older self's room. Or perhaps the extra memories, including a deep familiarity with the rhythms of the place, had made her more attuned to her environment. 

She now knew, for example, that the scrubs she'd stolen from the Mister Chad facility and worn for this op were similar, but not identical, to the ones preferred by the care-home staff; among other difficulties, they lacked the front pockets in which nurses kept pens, bandage scissors, and the like. She could fool a visitor, dressed like this, but not a staffer. 

Which was going to be a problem in about eight seconds. 

Peggy began humming softly to herself as she quickened her pace. 

_Yes, it's a good day_  
For singing a song  
And it's a good day  
For moving along 

She angled toward the nurses' station and scooped up the first blunt object that came to hand, smiling tightly as she recognized it. Perhaps a reputation had its uses.

Four seconds.

_Yes, it's a good day  
How could anything be wrong?_

She saw the pale blue eyes settle on her face and widen in recognition as she closed in on another set of pocketless scrubs. 

“Miss Carter,” Agent Thompson began.

Peggy belted her across the face with the stapler. She crumpled.

“The proper term of address,” Peggy snarled, “is _Agent_.” 

_A good day  
From morning 'til night._

Thompson surged to her feet and charged. 

Peggy sidestepped the blonde woman's rush, swinging the stapler at the back of her head as she passed and not being terribly surprised when the blow went wide. Thompson moved like a snake, twisting in place and lashing out with a bony fist. Peggy ducked again and punched with the stapler. She didn't quite understand all the new fragments in her head about not touching blood for fear of something called AIDS, but there would be time to learn later. Best to let her body do its job. 

She grabbed a fistful of Thompson's hair and slammed the side of her head into the top of the nurses' desk. Thompson growled, wrenched free, and came up with her hands bristling with pens and at least one syringe. A ceramic mug skittered across the desktop, spilling writing implements, and Peggy snatched it up and hurled it. 

Thompson batted the mug aside and sent the syringe flying at Peggy's throat before the ceramic hit the floor. 

What no one seemed to understand, Peggy thought (as she brought a clipboard up as a shield), was that women were nearly always more dangerous fighters than men. In general, the more innocuous-seeming the woman, the more likely she was to have left a string of corpses in her wake. (Thompson got behind her and clapped a hand over her mouth, so she decided to hell with AIDS, and bit until blood spurted and the grip slackened enough for her to escape.) Women lived in a world where half the population had the advantage of them in size and strength; they couldn't afford niceties like mercy or rules of engagement. (She threw her weight behind a rolling desk chair and slammed Thompson into the linoleum.) Women had everything to lose, and it was astonishing how many fighters forgot that. (She snatched a coffee pot off a nearby burner and sloshed the scalding contents over her opponent's hands and face.) That was, of course, usually when they lost.

(She punched Thompson with the coffee pot.)

(Then she did it again.)

(And twice more for luck.)

Peggy clambered to her feet, shaking from the adrenaline rush, and pushed the errant strands of her hair out of her eyes. Thompson sprawled beneath her, unconscious and unmoving except for the steam rising from her burns. 

Peggy looked up to a sea of blanched faces. When had the corridor gotten so crowded?

It was half instinct, half memory. She snatched a pen off the floor, one of the fancy ones with three ballpoints in three colors, and shook it furiously in Thompson's face.

“This is _my_ pen!” she shouted at the unconscious Thompson. “And _this_ —” she grabbed an ordinary ballpoint and flung it at the other woman's limp hand “—is _yours!_ ”

The crowd parted as she stormed out, silently thanking all gods that nurses hadn't changed that much in thirty years when it came to stationery goods. 

Her stolen car took her to the safehouse the elder Peggy remembered on the outskirts of town. She locked all the doors and checked all the sensors and traps before deciding the place was secure enough for her purposes. 

Then she lay down on the narrow bed, atop the dusty coverlet, and let herself feel again.

It was a solid two hours before she stopped crying.

*

The car was low-slung, sleek and black, more menacing than anything typically found in a government motor pool. That was probably why, when it prowled to a purring stop in front of Stark Industries' corporate headquarters, the slim secretary with perfectly coiffed scarlet hair climbed into it without hesitation. It was a beautiful, powerful machine. Anyone would get in, Peggy thought.

The fact that it was Natasha Romanoff's personal car probably helped, too. 

“Clint, how many times have I told you to keep your carny hands off—” Natasha stopped, her hand frozen halfway to the seatbelt catch.

Peggy pushed the bridge of her sunglasses up her nose, just slightly. “Agent Romanoff,” she said evenly, and stomped the accelerator. 

The car lunged forward like an unleashed panther, and both women were slammed back into their seats. Natasha yelped as the back of her skull whacked the headrest. 

“Best buckle up,” Peggy sang, slaloming around a curve.

“Who the hell do you think—”

“Oh, don't be dull,” Peggy snapped. “You know perfectly well who I am; you've got eyes.”

“Last I checked, you were in an Alzheimer's facility in Virginia,” Natasha shot back. “Even a good dye job wouldn't turn Sharon into—”

Peggy wrenched the wheel. Natasha squeaked.

“Don't play dumb,” Peggy ordered. “Cards on the table, Agent. I need a favor, so I have no reason to harm you unless you give me one. And I have two useful pieces of information to trade for what I want. I am nothing if not generous.”

“What are you after?” Natasha asked. “SHIELD? If this is a coup, you've grabbed the wrong hostage. I'm not exactly popular.” Her voice was steady, but her knuckles were white on the door handle.

“Popular enough,” Peggy said. The engine roared as she accelerated up a freeway on-ramp. The wide ribbon of concrete unrolled before her, beckoning. At least California freeways hadn't changed much. “Nicholas trusts you. Agent Barton spoke highly of you in his report.” She risked a sideways glance. “And you managed to avoid garroting my godson. Well done, you.”

Natasha blinked at her. “Thanks,” she said, and it almost sounded sincere. “But I wasn't kidding. If you call SHIELD and demand a ransom, they'll probably laugh and hang up.”

“Yes, I read about your exploits.” Peggy swerved around a tractor-trailer and slipped into the left lane. “The last Black Widow, with red in her ledger. The woman who can't go home.” 

“Well,” said Natasha, swallowing, “I did blow it up.”

“What if I told you—” Peggy zipped around a Mini Cooper “—that you weren't the last?”

There was a long pause, so pregnant Peggy was sure she'd need to midwife it.

Then: “Bullshit.”

“Language,” Peggy scolded. “Two weeks ago, I fought a woman with your skillset. Slim, blonde, called herself Thompson.” 

“That means nothing.” 

“I got a good look at her left wrist before I, er, incapacitated her. I'd know those scars in any century.”

Natasha arched an eyebrow. “'Incapacitated'?” she echoed. 

Peggy grumbled under her breath. “I hit her with a stapler, if you must know.”

“That is _adorable_ ,” Natasha drawled. 

Peggy shot her a glare. “Do you suppose the ejector seat in this model still works? Shall we test it?”

Natasha laughed, low and a little husky and so much like Angie that it was like being punched. She settled more comfortably into her seat and said, “Name your terms.”

Peggy took a deep breath. “I have no interest in SHIELD,” she lied. “I'm on personal business these days. But I've been—away—for some time, and the world has changed.” She cocked her head. “I suppose you could say I need a refresher course.”

“In espionage?” Natasha sounded incredulous.

“Is there anything else you're terrifyingly good at?” Peggy snapped. 

The redheaded spy shrugged. “One of these days, somebody's gonna ask me for ballet lessons.” 

Peggy couldn't suppress her snort. 

“Okay,” Natasha said slowly. “Teach Peggy Carter to spy. Why not?” She folded her arms. “The other Widow was one piece of intelligence. What's the other?” 

“A rogue faction within SHIELD. Possibly a network of moles. They want to remove Nicholas. It's why I'm here.”

“And why you came to me,” Natasha muttered. “Figures. They're the ones who activated Project Pendragon?”

“You're not cleared for that.”

Natasha just looked at her. 

“All right, yes. They can clone a body, but not lock a window. I don't know how far they extend, so you and Nicholas will have to work the case yourselves on your end.”

“Why me?” Natasha asked. “You could've gone straight to Nick on this. You can't be that rusty.”

Peggy shook her head. “I couldn't risk being seen. They must have Nick under surveillance. You were the best conduit.”

“How do you know I'm not a mole?”

Peggy gave her a tight smile. “I saw the place where they made you,” she said simply. “Only a handful of women escaped that horror. They became free agents, and most went mad in the end. They welcomed death when it came.”

“So?” The word was nearly inaudible.

“You could have met death in Budapest. You chose Agent Barton instead.”

“He chose me,” Natasha corrected. 

Peggy just looked at her. 

Natasha huffed. “Fine. Pull over.”

“What? Why?”

“First lesson. You drive like an old lady.”

*

Peggy was in Chennai a year later when she woke to the sound of her burner phone buzzing against the coffee table. Grunting, she sat up, swung her legs off the couch where she'd been dozing, and snatched up the offending device.

A chain of messages flickered past her lock screen. She'd never seen Natasha so agitated.

_Margot_  
Wake up  
Emergency  
Pls reply asap  
Y wnt b sry 

The poor syntax was a worrying sign. Peggy tapped out a reply: _Here._

The answer was immediate: a picture message. Frowning, she swiped it open.

She recognized the image of the SHIELD medical bay immediately. The blankets on the hospital bed were unmistakable. Tubes, IVs, monitors—all as usual. 

Then she focused on the body in the bed, covered up to its collarbones. Pale, slightly golden skin, flushed with sleep. Muscular neck. Strong jaw. Full lips, sharp nose. Long, dark-gold eyelashes on closed eyelids—

She stopped breathing. It took her ninety seconds to remember she needed oxygen. She gasped, and pulled in just enough air for a single word:

“Steve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, darlings! I am so, _so_ sorry I've been away so long. Family shit plus political shit plus a BIG surge in the ol' PTSD—it's been a less than great time to be me. But I love this story, and I love Peggy, and I am getting back on that horse. Future chapters will see Peggy exploring the underbelly of the MCU as she deals with the question of what to do about a certain super-soldier and a certain Mister Chad. Next chapter, in particular, will deal with the events of a certain 2012 summer blockbuster about a certain dysfunctional superhero family … 
> 
> All of that said, please, PLEASE comment. I'm in the middle of a family shitstorm right now and my therapist is on leave, so I need all the positive reinforcement I can get. 
> 
> *puppy eyes*
> 
> Notes time!
> 
> 1\. Fun fact: James Montgomery Falsworth, in the comics, was gay. Canonically. You can decide how he got mixed up with Joe McCarthy and the Lavender Scare (a 1950s witch hunt trying to force gay and lesbian government employees out of their jobs), but I just needed Peggy to put that particular asshole Wisconsinite in his place.  
> 2\. “Merda” = Portuguese for “shit”, more or less. I leave you to imagine what situation made Daniel say it repeatedly. Canja is basically chicken soup. Daniel was a pragmatic soul and of goddamn course he cooked for Peggy on a regular basis.  
> 3\. “Kilroy was here” was an actual WWII meme, one that probably originated as the British proto-meme “Mister Chad”. Here's a nifty video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFw8MSF7yE4  
> 4\. The radium girls were a real thing, and a really awful case of workplace poisoning. The bones of one victim, exhumed five years after her death, gave off enough radiation to expose film and create the world's most ghoulish X-ray. Obviously Steve didn't suffer any negative effects, but Project Rebirth obviously made permanent changes to a number of his biological systems, including his bone marrow. _Agent Carter_ made clear that vita-radiation didn't hang around on the surface of the skin, but I took the liberty of concluding that injecting magic serum directly into major muscle groups and simultaneously flooding the body with vita-rays _might_ produce results not seen with brief, casual exposure.  
>  5\. The medallion Angie is clutching is a Tony Award, one of the most prestigious awards in American theater.  
> 6\. Per the show, Peggy was initially recruited into the SAS, which used women in a lot of roles, most notably radio operators for the French Resistance. Life expectancy in that job was measured in weeks. “Margot” was unusually successful, which means she probably saw a _lot_ of her friends die.  
>  7\. Peggy's new paranoia about AIDS: your author came of age in the 1990s, when HIV-related paranoia was so strong that she wasn't allowed to start middle school until she'd been tested for AIDS. My headcanon is that Peggy Prime had the danger of HIV transmission strongly impressed on her around that time, particularly with all the blood involved in her work, and passed her caution on to Margot. Until Peggy decided fuck it, I'm going to bite somebody. Peggy Carter, everyone. Zero fucks given.  
> 8\. DO NOT TAKE A NURSE'S PEN. THE NURSE WILL MESS YOU UP. Thank you to my favorite unicorn, tammyb77 on Instagram, for providing this useful insight into the quickest way to make a nurse want to kill someone.  
> 9\. You can't tell me the sports car Nat was driving at the beginning of TWS was government-issue. And you can't tell me Peggy wouldn't steal it.  
> 10\. YES, PEGGY AND NATASHA ARE SPY BESTIES NOW. YOU ARE WELCOME.  
> 11\. I am on Tumblr, or trying to be! I am onethingconstant. I am way more active on Instagram, where I am also onethingconstant and also you get to see pictures of Bucky Bear the Therapy Bear.  
> 12\. VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! Would you like to help me write the Great American Novel? No? Well, would you like to be a beta reader for a kickass YA novel about Norse mythology, the end of the world, high school and demisexuality with a similarly kickass female protagonist who says things like, “Thou art an asshole”? If any of that appeals to you, send an email to onethingconstant [at] protonmail [dot] com. Remember, only you can stop typos and giant wolves named Gary.


	4. That Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long-awaited reunion does not go exactly as expected. Natasha has questions. Phil Coulson has trading cards. Peggy has a problem. Daniel has a gift. 
> 
> Steve has no clue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy slightly belated birthday, Steve Rogers! I got you a nap and some cuddling with the right partner.

The quinjet set down with a bump, followed by the clank of the helicarrier's deck clamps locking around its landing gear. Peggy let out a quiet breath. She might have forged herself a SHIELD flight certification, but twenty-year-old memories of flying a prototype quinjet on a lark were no substitute for actual cockpit hours. She'd been more than a little concerned about her landing. 

She shut down the little jet's systems, listening to the chatter of air traffic control inside her helmet. Everyone sounded bored or distracted—in other words, normal. No one had noticed a supply pilot with a slightly different voice, flying in an hour early. How many times had she and Barnes tried and failed to convince Steve that the best intelligence agents were the boring ones?

Well, now she'd have plenty more chances. 

Peggy stood up out of the pilot's seat and stretched as she walked toward the rear cargo bay. The bay doors opened like jaws, admitting a ground crew who began unsnapping security webbing around crates of canned food. She rolled her right shoulder as she walked past them. She was just another weary pilot heading for the mess hall, albeit one who had never quite gotten used to how her shoulder felt without fragments of a German bullet in it. 

The helicarrier deck buzzed with activity as she strolled toward a door, but her helmet's ear protection muffled the roar of jet engines and the howl of the upper tropospheric wind. God bless her younger—older?—earlier!—self for approving a flying headquarters to avoid the diplomatic fallout of quartering SHIELD permanently in any given nation. It was hell on fuel bills, but at least she got to cover her moderately famous face with a helmet during infiltration. 

She stepped inside the flight-deck door, closed it behind her, and unsnapped her helmet catches.

And that was when someone grabbed her from behind, slammed her face-first into a bulkhead, and ripped the helmet off her head. 

“I can't decide,” Natasha Romanoff hissed in her ear, “whether you're stupid or crazy.”

Peggy twisted. Natasha grabbed a fistful of brown hair. 

“Nope,” she said, popping the P, and yanked. 

“Hair-pulling?” Peggy grunted. “Seriously?”

“A Black Widow does what is necessary to complete her mission,” Natasha purred in an overdone Russian accent. 

Peggy wrenched her head to the side, leaving more than a few hairs behind, and twisted like a snake in Natasha's grip to end up pinned again, this time face-to-face with her opponent, their lips inches apart. 

“And here I thought Dottie was the only Widow with a crush,” she snapped. 

Anyone else might have flinched. Natasha only smiled without humor. 

“What do you think you're going to achieve here?” she asked. 

Peggy rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don't know,” she drawled. “I suppose I can't resist the meatloaf in the mess.” 

“You should try the Jell-O.” Natasha arched an eyebrow. “Seriously, Margot, why are you here? What's so urgent that I can't take care of it on-site?” Her other eyebrow rose to join the first, a silent postscript: _Or don't you trust me anymore?_

“You sent the photo,” Peggy replied coolly, leaving the implied question alone. “What did you expect?” 

“More goddamn sense, considering who I'm talking to. Can there _be_ a worse place for you right now?”

Peggy blinked at her. “ _Yes_ ,” she said, as if the answer were obvious. “Anywhere Steve _isn't_.” 

Natasha's eyes narrowed. “He's in a secure facility, getting the best possible medical and psych care. You know how people say dead people are in a better place? This is that place.” 

“How very reassuring. An afterlife ruled over by the agents of Mister Chad. I am filled with confidence.” Icicles hung from the words. 

Natasha glared at her, then spat a few guttural syllables of Russian.

Peggy replied calmly, in the same tongue. 

Natasha growled. “Follow me,” she snapped, “and try not to blow your cover.” She snatched the helmet up from the floor and shoved it into Peggy's chest. 

Peggy followed her, duly behelmeted, into a small control room walled with monitors and manned by a curly-haired, gawky young man who looked at Natasha as if she'd come to carry out a surprise execution. He swallowed audibly. 

“Out,” Natasha ordered, and the young man fled. 

Peggy stationed herself in a rear corner, one eye eon the door, as Natasha typed on a keyboard without bothering to sit down. After a moment, she straightened up and jerked her head toward a screen. 

“Come look,” she said. 

Peggy stepped cautiously up to the screen. The image being displayed glowed softly with a view of a bright and airy room. Half of it was taken up by an enormous bed that nearly dwarfed the enormous body lying in it. The shape was muffled by a mound of blankets, but she could make out the curve of a spine, the jut of knees. It was a large man curled into a small ball, his face barely visible above the covers. 

The memory hit her like a truck.

_It's Dugan who calls her, at last, when Steve hasn't left his room in two days and his men are worried about dehydration. Even yesterday's air-raid sirens had no effect. So she picks the lock, steels herself for the worst, and goes inside._

_He's alive, at least, and she hates herself for being mildly surprised by that. Grief has killed good men before this. But the mound of blankets rises and falls with his breath, and the still room is full of the soft, wet sound of a human being fighting to breathe through too much pain._

_She tries to think of something to say, but she's never liked lying to Steve, and comfort now would only be a lie. So she crosses the room in silence, noting as she does that Bucky Barnes' field pack is sitting on a chair in a corner, where anyone in the bed can easily torture himself by looking at it. She walks around the bed, steps between Steve's head and the chair, and sinks down to sit beside him on the mattress, her hip just touching the crown of his head._

_Steve makes a noise that she will later tell a pesky historian was a sob, not a whimper._

_She strokes his hair—the only part of him she can reach without moving the blankets—and settles in to keep watch. Beside her, Steve grieves and trembles. His body fights to warm itself without the other half of his heart._

Peggy's sharp intake of breath clearly got Natasha's attention. 

“Yes,” she said, nodding at the screen, “he's a mess right now. His core temperature is stable at what we think is a normal level for him, his injuries have healed up, and his condition is fine, going by the agents he flattened the first time he woke up in New York. He was transferred here for everyone's safety, he's seeing a therapist daily, but yeah, it'll be a while before he processes everything. That's not what I'm showing you.”

“What is?” Peggy asked distantly, her eyes still locked on the ball of misery that had been the first love of her life. 

Natasha tapped a key, and the image shifted, the camera tilting down until Steve lay at the top of the frame. Beneath him, at the bottom of the shot, a middle-aged man in a government-issue suit with a receding hairline sat in an armchair, apparently reading a book. 

The Black Widow leaned over to a microphone. “Hey, Phil,” she said. “Say hello.” 

The man in the chair—Phil, Peggy supposed—laid a finger alongside his nose, like Saint Nicholas, without looking up. 

Natasha switched off the microphone, straightened up, and gave Peggy a small smile.

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Peggy replied. 

One ginger eyebrow went up. “Reassured, at least. Don't you recognize him?”

“Should I?” 

“He interviewed you back in the eighties. He had more hair then.”

“I've done a lot of interviews,” Peggy said testily. 

“He brought his trading cards.”

Peggy blinked. 

“That,” Natasha said coolly, pointing at the screen, “is your new best friend. Philip J. Coulson, agent of SHIELD and the world's leading expert on all things Captain America.” She shrugged. “Present company excepted.” 

“A fan,” Peggy said. 

Natasha raised a finger. “ _The_ fan,” she corrected. “He's had a history-crush on Rogers since adolescence. Did his Academy capstone project on Rogers' leadership style—it's now required reading in the command track. He's collected every file, fact, and artifact he can get his hands on, and I'm pretty sure he's got a cast of the shield from the original mold. If Captain America were a religion, Phil Coulson would be the pope.” 

“Is this supposed to impress me?” 

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Think about it. Rogers is Phil's ultimate collectible. He'd swaddle the guy in bubble-wrap if he could. _Nobody_ is going to hurt Rogers while Phil's around, or manipulate him, or even muss his hair. They won't get the chance. Rogers will be lucky if Phil lets him take a piss in peace, let alone get himself shot or poisoned.” 

“Unless Agent Coulson works for Mister Chad,” Peggy pointed out. 

Natasha gave her a flat look. “Phil would sell his own mother for five minutes with Rogers. If Phil's dirty, all it'll take is one disappointed look from Captain America and he'll be back on the side of rainbows and apple pie.” She shrugged. “Plus, he's not part of Chad.”

“What makes you so certain?” 

Natasha turned slightly to focus on the screen. “When I joined SHIELD, there was some … discussion … about whether I should be assigned field work. Most of the participants said no. Agent Barton said yes. Fury was undecided until Coulson weighed in with a suggestion. He said my skills were too valuable to park behind a desk—but I should only be trusted to work with Barton.”

“Why him?” Peggy asked. 

“Coulson said it was because Barton had a track record with me. But our first mission together, Barton spent the whole flight out pestering me to tell him my favorite coffee drink. On the flight back, it was my favorite dog breed. Every time we worked together, Barton made me choose something just because I wanted it, not for a cover or to please a superior.” 

Peggy nodded, understanding. Dottie's voice filled her head, full of wonder and vengeance: _I can be anyone I want._ “He taught you to choose for yourself,” she said.

Natasha flashed a bitter little smile. “Clint likes to say Coulson is the only handler he can stand because Coulson doesn't handle people. He lets them handle themselves.”

Peggy swallowed hard. “Steve did that, too.” 

“Because you taught him,” Natasha shrugged. “And he taught Coulson. We know Chad operates on coercion. Phil Coulson wouldn't last a week in that world.” 

Peggy let out a long breath. “All right,” she said quietly. “We'll play it your way. But I need a few minutes alone with Steve.”

“He probably won't wake up. He's been sleeping twelve, sixteen hours a day, and nothing wakes him until he's ready. Either he's healing some massive internal damage from the crash or the ice, or he's unbelievably depressed.”

“I know,” Peggy said, and didn't elaborate.

Natasha caught her eye sidelong, appeared to think about it, and then nodded. She leaned into the microphone and said, “Phil, you're needed in Monitor Two. I'll keep an eye out.” 

Agent Coulson gave the camera a narrow-eyed look, but stood up and walked to the door.

“Five minutes,” said Natasha. “You get seen, you owe me _and_ Phil dinner.” 

Peggy nodded, and went. She'd never walked so quickly in her life, not even when she'd had to stroll out of the Berghof before the bombers arrived. 

Steve's room was small, private, and she could see from the moment she stepped inside that someone—Coulson?—Natasha?—had tried to make it homey for him. The bed was bolted down like any ship's berth, but the heap of blankets was colorful and mismatched, as if someone had collected a dozen quilts and afghans made by a dozen different grandmothers and thrown them all over him. There was a braided rug on the floor, and Coulson's vacated armchair was more squashy and stiff. At least someone had thought to add color, softness, individuality. But somehow none of the pieces quite worked together, and the effect was that Captain America seemed to be sleeping in the back room of a Goodwill store. 

And then there was Steve himself.

The thing that no one had ever understood about Steve was that he had never been the right size. As a frail asthmatic, he'd had such an outsize spirit that he'd practically burst out of his skin first thing; as a hulking supersoldier, he'd still carried himself like a scrappy, slightly fey runt of a litter. The result was that no matter what people expected of their first meeting with Steve Rogers, they had always walked away muttering about his size. Even Bucky hadn't been immune—the first complete sentence he'd spoken to Steve after the transformation had been _I thought you were smaller._

At the moment, he was a hollowed-out ball of misery, and very small indeed.

She crossed the room with a steadier gait than was strictly called for, walked around the bed, and sank down beside him, his head just brushing her hip. It had worked once, a little; perhaps it would work again. 

Delicately, she began to stroke his hair. It was softer now, less slick between her fingers now that it was free of pomade and machine oil and the sweat of war. Idiots. They'd washed him, probably while he was unconscious, and they'd used modern shampoo. No wonder he'd fought his handlers in New York; they'd probably stuck him in some bland, safe recovery room with Glenn Miller playing on a stereo and expected him not to notice that his skin felt wrong. 

Steve made a small, high sound in his sleep, and she gave his scalp a gentle rub with her fingertips. The tenderness seemed to ease the tension in his body; his blanket-mound sagged slightly as he relaxed. Another thing he and Daniel had in common. 

_Mrs. Sousa calls her son every Sunday with the same question:_ When are you gonna make an honest woman of that English girl? __

_And every Sunday, Daniel's answer is the same, often delivered as Peggy sits silently beside him on the sofa, pretending to be absorbed in an intelligence report:_ As soon as she lets me, Mamãe. Peggy knows what she's doing better than I do. __

_He never seems troubled by Peggy's reluctance, after two years of passionate devotion, to set a date. For all Angie's teasing and Rose's less-than-subtle hints, Daniel goes on smiling gently as Peggy demurs, delays, and in one case returns the perfectly fitted designer gown Howard sent over with the addition of several fresh bullet holes._

_It's not that she doesn't want to get married. It's that as long as she has Daniel, the answer to_ When? _always seems to be_ Not now _._

_And then she comes home after midnight on a Sunday (a Director's work is never done) to find a new object glinting in the moonlight on her nightstand. It's a small silver frame, and she doesn't need any light to know that Daniel has looked into her jewelry box and taken matters into his skillful hands._

_She sits up all night, holding the framed photo, until dawn breaks and Daniel rolls over, blinks muzzily at his still-dressed fiancée, and mumbles, “'Zit?”_

_Peggy lays the framed snap of Steve Rogers on the quilt between them._

_“Oh,” Daniel mumbles. “That.” And he flops down again and begins rubbing the crust out of his eyes._

_“I can't decide,” Peggy says into the morning air, “whether this is your way of breaking the engagement.”_

_Daniel sits bolt upright, so fast Peggy squeaks and jerks away._

_“God!” he blurts. “I didn't mean it like that, Peg! I just—I thought it'd be—nice.” His adorably large ears twitch as he swallows and looks down at his lap._

_“'Nice'?” Peggy echoes. “Another man's photograph on your wife's nightstand?”_

_“Well when you say it that way, it sounds crazy.” Daniel rolls his eyes._

_“How would you say it?” Peggy inquires._

_Daniel huffs. “It was something Krzeminski said once. He told me I should forget about you. Said no woman would ever trade a red, white and blue shield for an aluminum crutch.”_

_“I don't—”_

_“Let me finish. Please?” He looks up at her through dark lashes. “I know I was an idiot and I know you've always made your own choices. But after I moved to L.A., I thought—maybe he was right. I can't compete with a ghost. Especially that one.”_

_“Daniel ...”_

_He smiles and looks down. “Don't worry. It took a while, but I got to thinking about that time I ran into you in the file room. Yeah, you were looking at a photo of another guy—but it wasn't Captain America.” His mouth quirks up on one side. “It was a skinny guy from Brooklyn with a constipated look on his face.”_

_“He always looked like that,” Peggy says stiffly._

_Daniel chuckles. “I bet he did. Anyway, I finally figured out it wasn't the big guy you fell for. It was the little one. And if your heart's big enough for five bucks of mean in a nickel sack—”_

_“I beg your pardon!”_

_“—Then maybe there's room for seventy-five percent of a dumb Luso from Yonkers—”_

_Peggy lunges in and shuts him up with a fervent kiss. When they part for air, she bumps her forehead against his and murmurs, “_ You _are not seventy-five percent of_ anything _, Daniel Sousa.” She raises her eyes to his. “You're really all right with this?”_

_He gives her his crooked smile. “The guy saved my life,” he says softly. “And you love him. And I could do worse than be reminded that you're not here for my dashing good looks or my fabulous wealth.”_

_“I should hope not,” she agrees._

_“You're here because of your terrible taste in men.”_

_Peggy snatches up a pillow and clouts him with it. He cackles into the goosedown._

_The wedding is set for the summer._

Daniel had always been so much cleverer than anyone had given him credit for, Peggy reflected as she gentled Steve into a deeper, more restful sleep. Clever enough to see that she would always love the flaming soul she'd first met on a New Jersey training ground. But he'd been wise, too, enough to know what Peggy hadn't been certain of herself until that moment: that she would always, forever, irrevocably love them both. 

And now, however horrific the circumstances, she had one of her loves back. And he needed her, and she would never willingly fail him. 

“Sleep, my darling,” she murmured. “You're safe as houses. Everything will soon be all right.” 

Steve sighed in his sleep. 

She went on petting him and considered her options. She could, of course, simply pilfer him from SHIELD custody—no, _liberate_ , that was the proper word—but even with Natasha to cover her tracks, that had its complications. SHIELD would hunt them forever; Captain America was too much a glittering prize for them to permit his escape. Worse, Mister Chad would be on their trail too—Steve would be as valuable to them as he was to SHIELD, and they would know to look for Peggy herself along with a hulking blond American icon. Steve might not take to life on the run, either, particularly if his recovery were prolonged. 

To say nothing of the mountain of psychiatric care he'd need. The loss of his closest friend, an arguably successful suicide attempt, a looming case of future shock—post-traumatic stress would be the least of his woes. Steve would need either years of therapy or an entire Hydra battalion to punch his way through, and she had shortsightedly burned Hydra to the ground in '45. Ordinary neo-Nazis wouldn't do, either. Nobody made fascists like they used to. 

Then there was option two: leave Steve with SHIELD, but promise him she'd be back when Chad was eradicated. That, too, was problematic. The mission could take years, and Steve Rogers was not renowned for his patience. Or his willingness to sit on the sidelines. Even using him as a mole wouldn't work. The man was such a poor liar that he'd told people he was from Paramus and expected them to ignore his Brooklyn accent. There was a reason nobody had ever bothered giving him a combat uniform that wasn't also a walking flag. 

That left option three, the cruelest and most difficult of all: leave him.

Walk away, for an indefinite period, leaving him to navigate a new century with only Natasha (and, Peggy supposed, Coulson) to watch over him. Let his great heart break, over and over, as he learned what the world had come to in his absence. Let him think himself alone. Let him grieve, mourn, and wail. And then at some point reveal to him that it was Peggy Carter who had let him suffer so.

Peggy closed her eyes against unshed tears. The woman Steve had known wouldn't have contemplated this. She'd have slung him over her shoulder, shot off the hinges on the door, and blasted their way to freedom and probably some rather awkward virgin sex. But she hadn't been that woman in a terribly long time. Time and ice and several wars and a marriage and an ocean of blood separated her from the girl who'd kissed Steve as he crouched on the hood of a speeding staff car. 

She would always love Steve Rogers. And for the second time in her unnaturally long life, he needed her to let him go. 

The kiss was soft, a brush of lips on temple. Steve didn't stir. 

She was out of the room before Coulson returned. Natasha was alone in the monitoring station when Peggy stalked in.

“Darn,” Natasha said dryly without looking away from her screens. “I picked out a restaurant and everything.”

“I expect regular updates,” Peggy ordered.

Natasha flicked off a sarcastic salute. 

“And as soon as he's up for it,” Peggy continued, “see that he makes it to Virginia.” 

That got the Widow to turn her head and arch an eyebrow in surprise.

“You know what Alzheimer's does for op-sec, right?” she asked. “She's the last person he ought to see. On a _lot_ of levels.” 

“She's all he has left,” Peggy said simply. “And he owes us a dance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Yes, that is Cameron Klein, a.k.a. Button Bob, in the monitor room. I couldn't resist.   
> 2\. So one question I had about Hydra infiltrating SHIELD is why nobody bumped off Captain America while he was so vulnerable, right after he thawed out. How did he even wake up in that recovery room? How did he make it to join the Avengers when someone could have, for example, injected him with a super-poison disguised as a new vaccine? And then I thought: _I watched you while you were sleeping._ Coulson would have been the ultimate creepy fanboy, showing up at random times while Steve was in the gym or catching up on his history or whatever. Hydra wouldn't have been able to predict when Steve would be unobserved, and that would have made assassination a lot more difficult. It is my headcanon that Phil Coulson saved Steve Rogers' life by being a fan. And Steve will probably never realize it, but Peggy will, and somehow I think that's almost as good by Phil's standards.   
>  3\. The Berghof was Hitler's home near Berchtesgaden during the war. It was bombed by British forces in late April 1945.   
> 4\. This will not be the last we will see of Peggy coming close to, or interacting with, Steve. But I couldn't justify him knowing about Peggy at this point in a canon-compliant story, and I really couldn't see Peggy blowing her entire op for Steve when his odds of surviving in her company were very much in question.   
> 5\. “He saved my life”: Daniel mentioned in Season 2 that he had served at Bastogne, which (as established in _Left-Hand Man_ ) also saw involvement from the Howling Commandos. It's also a pretty decent match for the winter rescue Peggy describes in _Winter Soldier_ , so I'm okay with rolling them into one event. The siege of Bastogne was well-documented in contemporary media, so even if Daniel never personally met Steve, he would know that Captain America had broken the siege and saved a lot of guys. (I based this on a veteran of Bastogne of my acquaintance who seemed to have read every book and article ever written on the event. It stands to reason that Daniel might have a similar morbid interest.)   
> 6\. I am on Tumblr, or trying to be! I am onethingconstant. I am way more active on Instagram, where I am also onethingconstant and also you get to see pictures of Bucky Bear the Therapy Bear.   
> 7\. VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! Would you like to help me write the Great American Novel? No? Well, would you like to be a beta reader for a kickass YA novel about Norse mythology, the end of the world, high school and demisexuality with a similarly kickass female protagonist who says things like, “Thou art an asshole”? If any of that appeals to you, send an email to onethingconstant [at] protonmail [dot] com. Remember, only you can stop typos and giant wolves named Gary.


End file.
